The Bare Necessities
by gotnerd
Summary: Inception AU. Arthur doesn't know what he needs, but it certainly isn't a bad cup of coffee.


It wasn't a big deal, really.

See, Arthur had this thing he did – when he washed his hands, that is. Every time, he would take two generous pumps of liquid hand soap (or four rotations of bar soap, if that's all that was offered) and scrub his hands for twenty seconds. Exactly twenty seconds he would count, but not just a piddly-shit onetwothreefour to get it over with. It was always the "one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi." He would scrub his hands like a surgeon about to operate, scrub until the orange or purple or warm-vanilla-beige goop frothed up between his fingers and slid off his hands in mounds. He would scrub and scrub until the backs of his hands were red and chapped, and he would look in the mirror as he did it, scrubbing and staring at the reflection of the stall behind him and feeling his eczema kicking in, and then he would rinse in ice cold water and blot his hands on more paper towel than anyone really needed.

Usually he would have his meds on him for just such an occasion. A little dab on the back of each hand, he would rub it in and convince himself that they didn't look so pink, that the little tears in his skin didn't sting too badly. They didn't, after the meds, or if they did it was only for a moment before dying out.

But he had left the little bottle on the bathroom sink before leaving the house this morning, and now he had nothing and it was like having two large, pink croissants for hands – except less buttery and delicious and more flaky and useless in trying to type out another case closure or pour a cup of coffee, which was his other daily routine.

To be honest, the coffee in his office was little more than hot water that gave the convincing appearance of being coffee. Edna, the only custodian that Saitama International Bank had bothered to hire in the last twenty years, finally retired about six months ago when her daughter (begrudgingly) took her back to Miami after quite a nasty divorce and the realization of a very empty house. Now they bounced from new hire to new hire, and every person seemed to have some particular vendetta against coffee. Or, at the very least, they admired the consistency of the people before them, and refused to even try to make it less than swill.

"SOMETHING FROM THE TROLLEY, LOVE?" It's Monday morning, and Arthur is attempting to pour himself a cup of coffee when a man twice his size both in height and breadth decides to try out his loudest, highest, Doubtfire-esque falsetto. At eight-fifteen in the morning. There are not many things that are good things to be doing at eight-fifteen in the morning. In fact, when polled, nine out of ten average people would say that doing most anything at eight-fifteen in the morning is not a good thing at all. Eames (the man in question) was the tenth. Arthur was trying to be.

And that is precisely why he was standing in the cafeteria at eight-fifteen in the morning, eyes closed and mouth open just enough to make him look like a complete fool, having tried and failed to pour himself a cup of coffee before passing out in front of the counter.

Arthur was sure he'd felt his head hit the ceiling. He knew this was impossible as the ceiling was at least five feet above him, but at the same time he wasn't so sure he hadn't just pissed his pants, either.

He just stared at him – there was no set emotion yet because it wasn't the right hour to feel emotions, so he stared at him numbly.

"Sorry. Sorry, that was – probably not," Eames shook his head slowly, sucking the corner of his bottom lip, as if rethinking his action. "not the best way to go about that."

Arthur stared.

"Definitely not."

Arthur stared.

"Well, I'll um – I mean, I don't really have anything to-…unless you want some Windex, that is." He gave him a grin, somewhere between cheeky and sheepish.

Arthur stared.

"Right. Well." He cleared his throat, taking a look about the place before strolling right past him, rag and aforementioned Windex in hand. "You just let me know, then."

"Let you know what?"

Now it was Eames' turn for a shock, as if he thought he was talking to a mannequin. "Y'know, if you-" He searched for the proper word. "Well, if you need anything, I s'pose."

If he needed anything. That was a good question, Arthur mused as he turned back to the coffee machine. He was awake now, awake enough to remember that his skin stung and it was still only eight-fifteen.

What _did_ he need?

It started with the bag of premium Arabica coffee grounds set by the machine the very next morning. Hand-ground, looked like, judging from its Ziploc container and the barely legible scrawls in Sharpie confirming the type of bean. One sip and he had to hold onto the counter to keep himself from floating away; it was perfection.

The next week, it was the bag of Farmer Bill's Chocolate-Covered Raisins, the kind that Dave in Finance had been teasing him about on Wednesday. "You go through those things like a fiend, man," he'd sneered over his cubicle. "You're gonna give yourself diabetes or somethin'. How many grams of sugar's in that?" He had grabbed the bag before Arthur could protest, poring over the nutrition facts like it was a dirty novel, complete with equally dirty chuckles. "Wow, yeah. You gotta cut down on these." What the fuck business was it of his how many chocolate-covered raisins he ingested? Arthur was sure it was his doing. He still ate them though, giving Dave a little glare whenever he passed, snide bastard.

But the next week, there was a magnifying glass sitting on top of his keyboard – similar to the little red one he had been complaining he'd lost. Tommy was the only one who'd actually been listening to his pleas, looking up from tweaking the case load sheet to give a half-hearted "sorry", and then, a few minutes later, "Can't you just pick up another one at like, Duane Reade or something?" But Tommy hadn't come into work that day.

And then there were the two bottles of that golden oolong tea that he had complained they no longer sold at the 7-11 downstairs, the box of staples he'd asked his unsympathetic and remarkably stingy boss about borrowing from the supply cabinet; the little blue stress ball that Maynard had stolen right in front of him, without so much as a "can I borrow this for my phone conference"; the Post-It note he'd mistakenly thrown out with Mr. Pinkman's number that he had all but flipped his desk over losing. Now, Arthur was a paranoid man by nature, but there was something particularly unsettling (if not slightly pleasant) about this recent chain of events. Someone in his office was toying with him, he was sure of it. Someone who wanted his attention. But for what purpose? Where could be the benefit for this person in bestowing upon Arthur all the things he desired? Where was their satisfaction in all this? Altruism was the first idea to be dismissed in an office where the boss couldn't even be bothered to give his employees a few measly twenty-five-cent boxes of staples.

So _why_? This single thought consumed him well throughout the day, made him peek over the tops of cubicles, eyes narrowed as if he were in some cheesy spy movie, made him look around him in a similar manner once he'd boarded the train home, and the bus, and finally the short route he walked to his apartment complex. He thought while he unlaced and untied and unbuttoned his various vestments, while he ate his way through Mushu Palace's largest order of spicy sesame chicken and pork lo mein, while he brushed his teeth and put in his nightly whitening strips. But it didn't come to him until he was washing his hands for the twelfth time that day. Why, he thought, would anyone do him such daily kindnesses when they could have easily just gone about their normal routine? His hands tingled under the cold water, and he could feel the roughness of callouses beginning to form between his fingers as he scrubbed. Maybe it was to make him cease his constant whining. I need this, I need that... Arthur stared at himself in the mirror for a moment, as if he'd been hit by an eighteen-wheeler. For the first time in a very long time, he studied the features of his face, as if they could give him some clue. His eyes, the color of roasted chestnuts with only half the warmth, were a stark contrast against his pale skin; his lips were thin, even thinner now, taut and grim in thought. Finally, he resigned himself to sleep – it was the only way to escape the insistent buzzing of thoughts in his head.

Unfortunately, resigning oneself to sleep was easier said than done. Taking his Tuesday morning Red Bull cleanser, Arthur could only pray that no one noticed the dark circles worn under his eyes. It wasn't until he heard a vaguely familiar voice that, similar to their first encounter, he really jolted into the world of the living.

"Mail for – Arthur Callahan?"

"That's me," he replied as casually as he could muster. Eames was easily twice his size, and in his frazzled state of mind, anyone was an enemy this morning. For a second, he hesitated in taking the small, padded envelope, making things all the more awkward. Finally resigning himself to the fact that his life was not a spy thriller, Arthur turned back to his computer, tearing open the package and pulling out his godsend – the only type of lotion that would instantly relieve the burning of his hands. The bottle and application instructions were all in Norwegian, but that didn't matter – the art of reducing his lobster claws to human hands again was a universal language in which he wished to be fluent. "Thanks, man," he replied, a little glumly. "I needed this."

There was a pause; Arthur could feel his presence behind him, still standing there. But after a time came his reply in an almost guarded tone.

"Well I'm glad I could provide it for you, then." Well, what the Hell did that mean. In the time it took Arthur's brain to assemble two and two, Eames had retreated, presumably to the mailroom. Of course, he thought, of course! – once in the morning and once in the afternoon, while everyone else was typing up case closures or yakking on the phone to the team in Bangladesh, Eames would roll in with his cleaning cart, wiping down the streaky windows and the crumbly counter in the breakroom. This gave him the perfect opportunity, Arthur realized, to hear other people's conversations – including his own, which was not a difficult feat as he had a tendency to project when upset. During those long hours between shifts, he could have easily gone down to the mini-mart to purchase a bag of Farmer Bill's; the Asian market down on Sixth Street still sold the golden oolong tea, and finding a magnifying glass was easy, as a great number of backup supplies could be found right in the mailroom.

And that, Arthur concluded, was his "in".

"Just a box of staples." He couldn't seem to look Eames in the face as he rummaged through the supply drawer before removing one small red cardboard box.

"That all?" Eames asked innocently enough.

"Well I just wanted to say—" _Christ_, what did he want to say? "—that I really appreciate it."

He identified the look in Eames' eyes: amusement. "Just a box of staples, mate. Don't worry yourself."

"That's not what I meant." At this point, he knew he had him.

"You mean the package, then? Just doing my job."

"I'm not stupid. The – the coffee, the candy, my _stress ball_ – c'mon. That was you. Had to be you. Everyone else just turns a deaf ear to it, but you actually listened. Which, by the way, way to put me on edge for a whole goddamn week, I thought I had a stalker, which obviously I do, I mean, who eavesdrops on everything a person-"

Eames, still finding this utterly entertaining by the looks of it, stopped him short of a full-on rant. "How could I eavesdrop, you might as well have been shouting it at me! I could hear you all the way in the bloody breakroom. That's your problem, mate, you've got to learn voice modulation."

"But," and Arthur could not possibly restrain himself from asking the one question that had plagued his mind from Day One, "why?"

Eames shrugged, perhaps shrugging off the acknowledgement of his good, albeit odd, deeds. "Doesn't take much to recognize a person who needs a little help. Specially one who was borderline comatose in front of the Mr. Coffee."

"Wow." No secret plans. No hidden plot. Just a person doing nice things for another person he didn't even know.

"But listen, if it bothers you so much, just forget it. I just thought it'd be best to, y'know. Go covert for the whole thing. Like an anonymous donation. I don't need the recognition, just…wanted to do something nice for someone who needed it." Eames suddenly seemed very interested in wiping down the "incoming packages" table, as if he were suddenly a little bashful.

Ah, but there was always a catch, and Arthur had him pegged now. "There's one more thing I need," he tested, leaning a little over the bottom portion of the split door. "Think you can make it happen?"

Eames looked up, met his gaze again. "Depends. What do you need?"

"Your number."

There was that glint of amusement. "And what would you need that for?"

Arthur could barely contain himself, what with the stupid grin planted across this mailroom clerk's face. "I feel like I'm gonna be in desperate need of some good sushi. This Friday, around – oh, I'd say eight-ish." Just as he was thinking what a witty, charming person he was, Arthur received a smile from Eames that bowled him right over.

Eames slipped him his number, written on paper torn from a USPS notebook full of tracking codes. With a smile that said if he could bust out of this joint right now and take him out on the town he would, he said only, "I'll see what I can do."

That was just what Arthur needed to hear.


End file.
